


True Love's First Kiss

by kittymaine



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Curses, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymaine/pseuds/kittymaine
Summary: Young people in the town Jalten are coming under the power of a fatal curse. Only people who have not connected with their soulmate are being affected and even Jaskier has come under the power of the curse. Can Geralt break the curse before it's too late? Tune in next week to find out!
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 323





	True Love's First Kiss

Geralt could tell that something was wrong in the town of Jalten as soon as he rode in. There was a certain stench that a menaced citizenry puts off that was hard to ignore, even when it was laced with the smells of rain and cow shit that overtook much else.

Experience told him to go straight to the elder of the village without wasting time settling Roach into a stable or trying to clean the grime of the road off of her or himself. It was unlikely he would get any kind of welcome in town until he earned it by solving whatever issue it was they were dealing with. Keeping his hood down low, he asked a few passerby who was in charge and where he could find them. Finally, the fifth person he asked begrudgingly gave him the information he was looking for. He was lucky. Sometimes he didn’t get an answer at all.

Their instructions led him to the north side of the village to a nice home that wasn’t much larger than the rest of the wood and stone buildings surrounding it. He dismounted and tried to do the service of kicking as much mud as he could off of his boots before he knocked on the door. When he did knock, an old man bent by age and skin weathered by the sun answered and squinted up at him through the rain.

“Hello?” he asked, examining Geralt with the edge of someone with experience dealing with strange people on his doorstep.

“Hello,” Geralt replied, trying to sound as solicitous as possible. “I am a witcher just passing through and came to offer my services, if they’re needed.” Short and to the point, but also respectful. Good enough.

The old man’s white eyebrows raised a little higher on his creased forehead and he leaned out the door a little to squint up at Geralt and under his hood.

“Ah. A witcher,” the man sighed in what seemed like relief, reaching up one wizened hand to stroke at his beard. “Yes, yes. Your services are direly needed. Please, come in.”

The old man turned his back on Geralt and retreated inside his modest home, confident that Geralt would follow him inside. After a short pause to indicate his surprise at the easy reception, Geralt did. He found the old man at the stove, putting a kettle on and fiddling with some dented tin cups.

“I suppose you heard that someone in our town is slinging curses. Absolutely terrible stuff. The people must really be in a tizzy if you’ve already heard of it. I didn’t even know there was a witcher in town,” the old man was saying. Geralt took the time to examine the inside of his home as he went on. It looked completely normal. There seemed to be no one else in the home, despite signs of a woman’s touch near the hearth, cozy lace added to the end of tablecloths and curtains. There were a number of chairs and benches and stools stuck in every corner of the room near the hearth, indicative of a lot of visitors. He supposed that made sense if the old man was the leader of the small town. Nothing was in great condition, though it did seem that there was care put in to repairing any damage and trying to get the most out of every item.

“I’m Albert, by the way,” the old man added without a glance back toward Geralt.

“Geralt,” he answered shortly, returning the pleasantry.

“Do you have much experience with curses, Geralt?” he asked, taking a careful seat on easily the comfiest and most heavily used looking seat in the room.

“Some,” Geralt said, under selling himself quite a bit, but not wanting to sound too confident. “I have more experience slaying monsters, but I can track down the cause of a curse for you, if that’s what you need.”

“That is indeed what we need. Most of our young people have been afflicted and the curse has proved to be deadly. If it goes on much longer, it could very well spell doom for our little town.” The kettle on the stove started to rattle as it heated up, the metal rattling side to side on an uneven base.

“What are the symptoms and how many people have been affected?” Geralt asked, shifting a little on his feet.

“Please. Take a seat,” Albert gestured to a rough hewn wooden chair with a repaired leg directly opposite him. Geralt awkwardly took a seat there, unused to being treated civilly and not sure if there was an ulterior motive to asking him to sit. “It first presents as some kind of wasting disease. The victim grows weak and tired. By the time they are too weak to walk they begin fainting. By the time the fainting starts, the marks begin to appear.”

“Marks?” Geralt prompted him, still sitting stiffly on the edge of the wooden chair.

“They look like vines, though the color varies. Black and green seem to be the most popular. Once the marks show up, the victim is bed ridden. We’ve already lost the first three to the curse, so I am afraid you can’t interrogate them.”

Geralt grimaced. That was indeed bad news. Often the first to be afflicted by a curse held the key to determining its cause.

“And you said it primarily affects young people?” Geralt asked.

“Yes, but it is more precise than that,” Albert answered.

Just then, the rattling of the kettle must have reached a noise level that Albert found satisfactory as he climbed to his feet with a grunt and used a nearby cloth to lift the kettle off the stove. He poured the hot water into two tin cups he had nearby and proffered one to Geralt. Geralt sniffed at the steam and picked up the smell of pungent herbs. Nothing offended his nose or worried him about what smells he could identify, so he took a cautious sip. It tasted incredibly bitter and medicinal, but the warm water felt nice as it ran down his throat.

Albert sat heavily in his own padded chair and took a long loud slurp of his own cup and sighed heavily. He relaxed back into his chair and seemed comforted by his tea.

“The curse only seems to affect people with unconsummated soul marks. It hasn’t affected them all at once. We’re not sure what is causing it, but it is quite dire.”

“Soul marks?” Geralt asked, frowning. Curses could be set upon people by all sorts of factors. They could be cast on specific individuals from afar, they could be caused by touching or otherwise interacting with cursed objects and in some cases caused by powerful monsters. He wasn’t sure he had heard of a curse that affected people based only on whether or not they had consummated soul marks or not. “That is very unusual,” Geralt added as diplomatically as he could.

Albert took another noisy sip of his tea. “Yes, I hadn’t heard of anything like it before either.”

“Would it be possible to speak to some of the people affected? They might hold some clue to what is causing the curse,” Geralt asked.

“That might be difficult,” Albert responded. “Many people in the village are superstitious. They already are distrustful of witchers and with their children on their deathbeds they may not be amenable to allowing them near a witcher.”

Geralt expected as much. To say people were distrustful of witchers was a bit of an understatement, but Geralt appreciated Albert trying to soften his words, unnecessary as it was.

“However, there is a traveler who was passing through who was affected by the curse. He’s being treated by the local physician and can’t protest while he relies on our care for him. I will arrange for you to talk to him.”

“Thank you,” Geralt nodded and knocked back the last of his tea with a grimace. The taste was still acrid, but the warmth was appreciated.

“No, thank you, Geralt the witcher,” Albert smiled placidly. “If you can stop this curse for us, we will be greatly in your debt.”

* * *

The traveler, of course, turned out to be Jaskier. Geralt wasn’t surprised so much as he was exasperated. And, after a moment to let that exasperation rush through him, a creeping sense of dread. The curse was fatal, after all.

“Geralt!” Jaskier exclaimed and tried to sit up as soon as he walked through the small threadbare curtain strung around the narrow cot acting as his bed. He tried to get up but was quickly guided back down onto his back by the brisk physician. She shrewdly glanced back at Geralt as she straightened up.

“You two know each other, I take it,” she said dryly.

Geralt tried to wipe the constipated expression off his face, he really did. “We’ve met.”

“You don’t know the weight this takes off my chest!” Jaskier exclaimed, trying to gesture expansively, but managing to more like flop his arms out. “Miss Phylis, I have the greatest confidence in my dear witcher. He will surely find a cure for this cursed, ah, curse,” Jaskier went on, his voice rough and his face pale and pinched despite his attempt to reach his usual vigor.

“Jaskier. You look terrible,” Geralt said as he stepped closer and took a seat on an uneven and diminutive three legged stool by his bedside.

“How cruel of you to say so,” Jaskier responded, pressing his hand to his chest.

“How did this happen?” Geralt asked, getting to the point. The lady physician excused herself to the other side of the curtain, her obligation to introduce Geralt to Jaskier completed.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell you. I showed up in town, I played a few shows, and walked around town. By the third morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. Now, I’m as you see me,” Jaskier responded with an attempt at a self deprecating laugh that comes off as despairing.

Geralt did see him. He was pale and sweating, his normally burnished brown hair dark with sweat. His eyes looked unfocused and his breath had a distinctly unhealthy smell, like something in his lungs or mouth were rotting. The signature curling vines were also present, looming threateningly up from the collar of Jaskier’s sweat stained undershirt. They were black with threatening thorns hidden among the leaves and buds or unbloomed flowers.

“Tell me specifically everything you did, everyone you spoke to, everything you ate,” Geralt growled, leaning closer. The stink of sickness clung to Jaskier but rather than putting Geralt off it put him on edge. Jaskier may only have a few days until the curse ran its course.

“You have to be joking,” Jaskier grimaced and seemed to try and sink further into his thin cot.

“I’m afraid not. The cause of the curse could have been anything. I need more information if I’m going to track it down.”

Jaskier’s grimace of distaste lingered, but he didn’t protest further. Instead, he started to talk. He talked and talked, at first with the energy and flair as he usually did, then the energy tapered off until he was just reciting events. By the time he got halfway through the events of his second day, the lady physician jerked the curtains aside and gave Geralt a threatening look.

“I think our bard is quite done for today,” she said curtly and then loomed threatening over Geralt despite being maybe one third his size.

He looked up at her evenly and then looked at Jaskier. He seemed to be struggling to stay awake and was sweating more than when Geralt first came in. He needed to rest, Geralt knew. That still didn’t stop the anxiety in his gut that pushed him to keep wringing information from the withering bard.

He stood instead. “I’ll look into what I have so far and come back for the rest tomorrow.”

* * *

Geralt was true to his word and retraced Jaskier’s steps for the rest of the day. First to the inn, where he booked a room for himself from the reluctant innkeeper who only became more reluctant as Geralt pressed him for information on anything unusual during Jaskier’s stay. Then, a brisk walk through the town, back around to the inn, and so on through the events of Jaskier’s day.

Nothing struck him as odd and so far as he could tell he didn’t seem to gain the curse, though to be fair he wasn’t sure if he would be susceptible. He had been advised that the soulbond had been removed from him along with his ability to reproduce. That meant that he was technically unbound, but also that he didn’t seem to have any potential to be bound. He knew so little about the curse, he couldn’t begin to theorize if this made him a target or not.

Trudging through the wet stinking little town, Geralt allowed himself to think on soul bonds and the circles on the pinky fingers of most of the villagers he passed by. Most of the young children had the pale gray rings that indicated they hadn’t yet met their soulmates. Black for the young people who had met their soulmates and pink or red for the people who had consummated their bonds, whatever that meant for that particular couple. Of course, there were also the older villagers with no rings on their little fingers, one half of a widowed pair. Then, there was Geralt with the thick scar tissue circling his pinkie, obscuring any bond he might have once had.

Destiny would supposedly lead him to his soulmate, if he believed in that rot. Jaskier’s ring was black and had been since he met him, but the talkative bard had never mentioned who it might be. Jaskier talked about just about everything else, so Geralt avoided bringing it up assuming it to be a sensitive subject. It would be convenient if whoever they were could just show up and consummate their bond and save poor Jaskier from a cruel fate, but destiny was never so kind as that, at least in Geralt’s experience.

Before the sun sunk too far below the horizon, he returned to the elder Albert to ask if any of the other victims would be willing to talk to him.

Albert pulled a grimace not so different from the one Jaskier had pulled earlier that day. “I doubt their opinions have changed, but I’ll see if I can persuade any of them,” he said before bidding Geralt good night and shutting the door tight. He would have no warm welcome that night, not that he was surprised. He thought he heard the step of light feet and swish of skirts behind Albert. The elder himself may not have been afraid of him, but apparently Geralt was too big of a risk to take with the women who helped care for his home.

That night in his small cramped room in the eaves of the inn, Geralt found himself stuck on Jaskier’s appearance when he had visited him earlier that day. The black curling vines. The sallow sweat slicked skin. Three people had already died. How long did his bard have?

If Geralt slept that night, it was short and fitful. The next day was beautiful and warm and people were already talking and working and shouting down the lane when he stepped out before dawn.

Geralt wasted no time heading to the physician and Jaskier. He needed some hint, some clue as to where to begin. He still had no real leads on the cause of the deadly curse except for Jaskier.

The physician’s expression was grave when she opened the door at his knocking. “I have no time to watch over the bard today,” she said as she stepped around Geralt, a basket heavy with clinking bottles and dry herbs looped over her arm. “I am trusting you not to overstrain him today. He gets worse every hour.” And with that, she was striding quickly down the dirt lane and away from her small house.

Geralt hesitantly let himself into her home and gently shut the door behind himself. The house was warm from the low fire still burning in the hearth and there was a sharp acidic smell in the air. The curtains around Jaskier’s cot was cracked open and Geralt could see his straining chest rising and falling quickly with his harried breaths.

Something wormed its way in Geralt’s stomach, something that was like fear but perhaps even more primal than that. Dread, maybe.

He stepped slowly toward the curtains and carefully pulled it aside once he got close enough. Jaskier’s eyes were open, but they were filmed over and seemed to not see anything. The sweat had slicked his hair dark and soaked through his thin white shirt. The black vines had wormed their way all the way up his throat to tickle at his jaw. They had also extended down his forearms and onto the back of his hands.

“Jaskier,” Geralt whispered, that crawling feeling in his gut solidifying into a rock, something heavy and solid that seemed to root his feet to the ground.

Jaskier’s eyes fluttered at the sound of his name and cast around the room until they eventually landed on Geralt. At the sight of him, Jaskier’s eyes seem to focus on him and a small friendly smile struggled onto his face.

“Geralt,” Jaskier greeted him, his voice cracking. “I’m so glad to see you,” he said, his voice small and pained despite the innocuous nature of what he had said.

“Jaskier,” Geralt said again, forcing himself to step forward and fumble to sit on the same stool from the day before. “The vines,” Geralt said, stopped, fumbled his words. He wanted to say they had gotten so much worse, that Jaskier looked like he was on death’s door. But, he didn’t want to alarm him.

Jaskier sighed and lifted his arm so that he could look at the back of his hand. As he watched, the vines there twitched and stretched toward his knuckles a little more. “Yes. They’ve about taken over, haven’t they?” Jaskier said what Geralt didn’t dare to.

“I didn’t find anything,” Geralt spit out, a guilt he didn’t realize was growing in his chest bursting out. “I failed you and all the others with this curse.”

Jaskier looked surprised for a moment. Then the stink of fear permeated the space around his bed, but his expression was one of resignation. “Ah, that’s alright, love,” Jaskier replied, a small smile struggling to his face again.

“It’s not alright,” Geralt growled. “Jaskier, you’re dying.”

“Aren’t we all?” Jaskier snarked back, wrinkling his nose back at Geralt and his twisted face.

“Jaskier,” Geralt said in reprimand.

“If I am truly dying, won’t you grant this dying man a boon?” Jaskier asked with all seriousness, though there was a spark of mischief in his eyes.

“You’re not dying,” Geralt snapped in a knee jerk reaction.

“You  _ just _ said that I’m dying,” Jaskier reminded him with a pointed finger and a wry expression.

Geralt ran a rough hand over his face. Jaskier took that for the reply that it was.

“Do you want to hear my request or not?”

Geralt heaved a sigh, but on second thought he pondered that he should take Jaskier seriously. Things were looking rather dire.

“What is your request?” he ground out.

Jaskier tapped one finger on his chapped bottom lip and looked at Geralt with determination. “A kiss,” he said shortly.

Geralt gave him the most incredulous expression he could manage, but Jaskier remained determined. “You can’t be serious,” Geralt replied, when Jaskier didn’t shortly afterward admit to the joke.

“I am. I’m dying! I would like one kiss before I die,” Jaskier protested.

“Why not ask the lady physician?” Geralt asked desperately. Surely any half attractive looking woman from the village would be better than him.

“Because I’m not asking her, I’m asking you,” Jaskier snapped back.

Geralt scoffed and Jaskier tried to scoff back, but it turned into a cough that quickly began to wrack his entire body. Geralt put a steadying hand on Jaskier’s shoulder and after Jaskier got hold of himself he pressed his own sweaty palm over Geralt’s calloused hand.

“This is a very odd thing to request,” Geralt said gruffly, a little upset that Jaskier even on his deathbed can give him this hard of a time.

“And yet here I am requesting it,” Jaskier says with a frown. “I would pontificate on how wrong you are, but I am getting rather tired.”

Geralt twisted his lips. He still found it strange that Jaskier would want a kiss from a big rough man like himself, but ultimately it was such a small request from a man who had been such a steady friend and ally. What would it cost him to do this for Jaskier? Such a small sliver of his pride as to be nothing.

Sighing as if he was being badly put upon, Geralt used the hand he still had on Jaskier’s shoulder to lean forward over him. The smell of sickness still hung thick around Jaskier and it was thicker this close. Geralt tried to instead focus on Jaskier’s eyes, still such a striking blue color as when they first met and so much sharper and brighter than he remembered.

Jaskier held very still, so still he almost seemed to be vibrating. Geralt tried his best to ignore it, ignore Jaskier dying beneath him, ignore those piercing eyes watching him so closely, ignore the wash of stagnant breath against his mouth. He pressed his mouth against Jaskier’s and felt the rasp of his chapped lips against his own. His mouth was plush and soft and his skin feverish. Jaskier sighed through his nose once they were touching, the tension quickly bleeding from him beneath him.

Geralt moved away but not too far away. Just far enough that he could look at Jaskier’s eyes, check for disgust, for regret, or even humor. But, Jaskier’s eyes were closed and Geralt was not sure but he thought he saw tears gathered at the base of his thick eyelashes.

Then, they both heard it. The loud sound of dry leaves and sticks moving quickly.

Jaskier’s eyes flew open and Geralt quickly sat back and they watched as the once closed blooms on the vines printed on Jaskier’s skin bloomed in a brilliant yellow before quickly withering and retreating back under Jaskier’s shirt. The vines sucked back in with the disturbingly realistic shushing sound of rustling dry underbrush.

Both Geralt and Jaskier stared at the vines for a long time, stunned into silence by the sudden turn of events. Hand shaking, Jaskier slowly raised his left hand and there on his pinky finger the previously black ring was now a happy pink blush. They both dethawed at the same moment, though with very different reactions.

“Fuck,” Geralt spat at the same moment that Jaskier yelped an exultant “Yes!”

The reactions and exchange that followed were similarly opposing. Geralt could taste salt in the back of his throat and snapped his denial to Jaskier’s energetic babble. So much for Witcher’s not having bonds. He certainly didn’t feel the magnetic pull or fluttering butterflies that all the songs and poems told about, but it seemed that didn’t prevent him from having a bond and likely just made it very difficult for him to follow the cues toward his soulmate. Jaskier obviously didn’t have that issue nor did he have any fear or qualms about chasing Geralt to the ends of the earth, based on the way he was bragging and struggling up onto his knees to chase after a second kiss.

“Sit back down!” Geralt barked. “You’re still weak.”

“Perhaps another kiss will whisk away my lingering illness,” Jaskier tried, straining against Geralt’s hands where they were clapped around his shoulders.

“Alright,” Geralt grunted flatly, pushing Jaskier back down onto the cot forcefully.

Jaskier sighed dramatically from his sudden recline on the lumpy cot. “I feel like the princess in a fairy tale, saved from certain death by a dashing prince.”

“There are so many things wrong with that statement,” Geralt rumbled. “You’re not a princess, this is not a fairytale. I am  _ definitely _ not a prince.”

Jaskier didn’t seem to be listening. “Surely we will have our happily ever after.”

“I still need to track down the cause of this curse so before you get up to any more trouble, you’ll be telling me the rest of what you did.”

“Perhaps you can just kiss the rest of the people in this village and we can be on with it.”

Geralt’s glare told him what he thought of that idea. Jaskier sighed in a put upon fashion and tried to wriggle the lumps out of the cot beneath his back. He supposed he would be stuck there for a while until he gave Geralt the information that he was looking for.

He cleared his throat and tried to settle his heart, beginning to recite the events of the rest of his time in the village.

* * *

Three days later, Jaskier and Geralt rode out of the village of Justen together. Jaskier was riding on Roach for the first time while Geralt walked, ostensibly because Jaskier was still visibly weak on his feet. Geralt would have preferred to have stayed in town a little longer, but it was clear that, despite the kindness of the elder Albert, the town preferred for Geralt to leave. Jaskier would have been free to stay longer and recover, but he refused to do so without Geralt. In fact, he made it clear he would not agree to them separating ever again if he could help it.

He was currently trying to compose an epic ballad on the events that lead to what he called their ‘epic coupling’, a phrase that never failed to cause intense shame to crawl under Geralt’s skin. They had yet to go any further than that first kiss, but he had no doubt that once Jaskier was up to good health he would be almost impossible to put off.

“What rhymes with ‘witch’?” Jaskier mused to himself. “Twitch, Switch, Hitch?”

“Bitch,” Geralt added flatly.

“Ah!” Jaskier exclaimed. “I am much classier than that, my friend! I’m offended you would even suggest it.”

“When are you going to get to the part where you fail to mention getting your fortune told by a suspicious old woman?” Geralt grunted.

“She wasn’t suspicious!” Jaskier exclaimed. At Geralt’s skeptical look, he revised his statement. “Getting your fortune told is a very common thing that you can find in any number of small towns! I had no reason to be suspicious of it.”

“You did have reason to be suspicious and instead you got yourself cursed,” Geralt responded gruffly.

“Well, it all turned out for the best, didn’t it?” Jaskier said with a fond smile and something just short of a leer.

Geralt pointedly looked at his shoes. “Just don’t expect the next curse to turn out so well,” he cautioned.

“I won’t have to worry about getting cursed again, as I’ll have an experienced Witcher by my side,” Jaskier said cheekily.

Geralt had nothing to say to that. He wasn’t wrong. Geralt didn’t intend to shake Jaskier off. Just the thought of the long road ahead of the both of them, a long unbroken trail of companionship, warmed him.

He fondly grasped Jaskier’s ankle and gave it a little shake. Jaskier looked down and smiled warmly at Geralt’s averted face.

A long trail of adventure laid ahead of them both and for once Geralt found himself looking forward to it.


End file.
